Falling For Zoe (The Camerons of Tide's Way #1) by Skye Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

was devastated. I don’t think he had a clue she was even thinking about leaving.”
    Zoe’s heart contracted in distress at the picture that leapt into her head of Jake with a look of baffled abandonment in his eyes. She could only begin to imagine how hurt he must have been.
    “Your mother never tried to explain it to you?” As soon as the words left her tongue Zoe knew she was getting awfully close to prying into things that were none of her business, but the question was out there, and she couldn’t take it back.
    “Mom left while I was at school. The twins were at Aunt Kate’s house, and Daddy had been called out to fight a big fire out on the island. We came home, and she was just gone. Her clothes were gone. And her computer and all her personal stuff. But no note. No explanations. She didn’t even say goodbye to her own mother.”
    Zoe sucked in a shocked gasp at the callousness. How could a woman do that to her own kids? And her mother? Never mind the man you’d promised to love and cherish ’til death do you part, and whose children you’d borne. “And you never heard from her?”
    “Oh, she called late that night when she figured Daddy would be home. But she never said goodbye to us.” The bitter angry edge to Ava’s words spoke volumes about the bewildered hurt she’d suffered and still did. “And we never saw her again.”
    “I’m sorry,” was the only thing Zoe could think of to say.
    “Why should you be sorry? You didn’t do it.” Ava flipped her hair back with an angry gesture.
    “No, but I can be sorry it happened to you. I know how hard it is to grow up without your mom around.”
    “Are all your brothers and sisters younger than you?”
    “All of them!” Zoe reached to set her empty glass on the table beside her chair. “I’m the oldest, like you, so I got to be the mommy whether I liked it or not. And my father didn’t share the cooking either.”
    Ava shot Zoe a look of surprise. “Never?”
    “Well, sometimes he’d take us all out to eat. That was his way of giving me a day off. Eventually my sisters got big enough to help, but Daddy never made my brothers join us. That was women’s work. He was . . . is kind of a chauvinist.”
    Ava chewed nervously on her lower lip. She looked across the lawn toward her own house, then back at Zoe. “Did your father tell you what to wear all the time, and who you could see, and where you could go?”
    “I’m sure he would have if there’d been a chance for me to get out of line. But I went to parochial school, so I wore a uniform. And when I wasn’t in school, I was too busy doing housework and watching out for my brothers and sisters to go anywhere.”
    Ava’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Ever? Like didn’t you have friends you liked to hang with? Didn’t you have a boyfriend?”
    “I had one real friend. My best friend. She’s the lady who told me about this house, in fact. But I never really had any boyfriends in high school. I guess my father would have had a lot to say about that. He’s pretty bossy.”
    “Even now when you’re all grown up?”
    “Even now.” Zoe thought about the royal fight she’d had with her father when she told him about her break up with Porter and her pregnancy. It was the reason she’d been determined to move out of his house and build a new life for herself that didn’t include a constant barrage of negative criticism and unfair expectation.
    Zoe pushed herself out of the chair and crossed to the railing. She gazed out over the still unkempt back yard to the marshes the bordered the waterway. It had been a momentous decision to spend her inheritance on this wonderful old house in the face of her father’s vehement opposition. She turned back to her young visitor. “My father even picked out the man he thought I should marry, and he hasn’t been too happy with me since the relationship broke up. Daddy didn’t want me to buy this house or move out of his either. But I’m an adult,